Twitter, to who said the howl of the Democrat

I'm somewhat coincidentally in a Birmingham hotel, a city partly represented by the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming who today ended the increasingly farcical situation that forbade the media, but pretty much no-one else, from naming Ryan Giggs as a footballer with an injunction covering his alleged extra-marital affair(s).

Hemming's critics, and there were many at tonight's conference dinner who derided him as hungry for publicity, should appreciate that he didn't name Giggs last month, or last week, but has only done it after the weekend's Twitter explosion in response to the footballer's legal team's clumsy and ill-considered attempt to draw attention to alleged online breaches of the injunction, and after Scotland's Sunday Herald had turned the court order into an international joke.

This afternoon's revelation has generated a great deal of interest in the story, but as I understand the situation it's only slightly less ridiculous than it was this morning. Then, I could easily discover the basic facts surrounding the case, but couldn't write about it. Now, I still can't actually name the subject of the injunction as the so-called super injunction prevents it, but I can describe today's parliamentary proceedings and legally blog to the world that an MP today named the footballer Ryan Giggs as the subject of that injunction!

Not even Edward Lear could come up with nonsense to rival this; the lunatics really have taken control of the asylum!

New Bond-Style Super-Villain Reveals Himself!

As someone who uses lots of trains, the news that Dr Sang-Woo Kim of the Sung-Kyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea has discovered a way of charging mobile phones by talking into them strikes me as more of a threat to Western civilisation than anything the late Osama bin Laden could have dreamt up.

At the moment, the technology can convert 100 decibels (about the same level as a busy road) into 50 millivolts of electricity, which isn't enough to charge a phone.

But give it time, and then won’t using public transport be fun? If, like me, you're irritated by sitting near an overly-loud, mind-numbing ‘I’m on a train . . . hello? . . . no, I said I’m on a train . . . ’ conversation, how's travel going to be remotely tolerable when there's a carriage full of half-wits screaming into their Nokias because they forgot to charge them up overnight?

Forget al-Qaeda, the electronics department of Sung-Kyunkwan University needs flattening.
Now!

Some are more equal than others...

I'm currently in Westminster, London (at the Institute of Directors), where just down the road our PM has today announced that he wants to end the 300-year-old law of royal succession which gives the eldest male child (if there is one) the right to become Monarch of the Realm.

Well, much as I agree with ridding society of unjust discrimination and antiquarian irrelevances, the leader of a government which introduced the £9,000 a year tuition fees that will probably exclude the poor from the Establishment for at least a generation, should surely be targeting something else if his often-stated claims to desire "social mobility" are to be taken seriously?

That the currently underprivileged may now have no way to lift themselves out of their deprivation for decades, it's not in any way reassuring to be told that our country's leader is working hard towards making sure that the as-yet-unborn offspring of our most pampered couple can enter the world knowing that its gender won't prevent it becoming the next unelected Head of State.

Beyond the Pale..

The BBC today reports that Fulham have become the latest football club to erect a statue outside. This famous old institution has joined the likes of Liverpool, with Bill Shankly outside Anfield, Ipswich who've got Sir Bobby Robson standing proud outside Portman Road and Leeds with Billy Bremner's arms forever raised in triumph at Elland Road by putting Michael Jackson on a pedestal.

Yep, you read that right, Wacko Jacko, the "King of Pop", a man with a history of extremely questionable behaviour, who according to the club's owner and chairman Mohammed Al Fayed, "loved Fulham and wanted to attend all of the matches". Although he only actually managed to turn up once (for a match against Wigan in 1999), Mr Al Fayed apparently thinks "it is something that I and everybody else should be proud of".

Proud?
Will the Jackson statue become more plastic as the years go by; just like the real thing?
Will it lighten over time; just like the real thing?
And will children be allowed to touch it; just like the ...

Wanted: Party Organiser for Charlie Sheen!

Many of you will do something nice for your mum this weekend, but I very much doubt that you think it qualifies as deserving of a medal. Unless of course, you're Prince Andrew. He, like me, has just spent a day in Northern Ireland. Whereas I was running a series of college workshops and visiting the HEA ICS Subject Centre, he was there as part of his role as unpaid trade ambassador, something for which he's received his latest honour for personal service to the Queen, the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order to add to his earlier honours for the same thing, the Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and the Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

Now I don't want to sound churlish, but how often has he been in the crush to get a seat on a north-bound train out of King's Cross, or spent the night in a Travelodge/Premier/Holiday Inn? His "business", as far as I can see, is all first-class and five-star, and while he might not receive a salary, he's unlikely to have paid for anything either.

Ten years travelling the world "representing British interests abroad", whatever that means, is not something most people outside of unelected dictatorships would consider worthy of a chest-full of medals, and is for most us, something we'd have preferred to have been an April Fool joke.

Cereal Killing

In a little under 2 hours, I'm going to be running a scholarly activity workshop in a rural conference centre which is in the middle of many villages looking just like Causton, the setting for the Midsomer Murders television programme. This fictional location, with a murder rate higher than South Central LA during gangland shooting season, was in the news last week when one of the producers said that to include some black faces would detract from its Englishness, even though nobody could possibly think it truly indicative of country life anyway.

If Midsomer was to be representative of the daily lives of the people I passed on the twenty minute journey from Oxford station, then its characters wouldn't be committing ever-more inventive murders, they'd be getting embroiled in bitter planning disputes with farmers wanting to convert maize fields into industrial estates or trying to evict traveller families laying tarmac parking areas where the corn used to grow...

The times they aren't a changing...

With apologies to Bob Dylan

I've just taken a short detour through Trafalgar Square on the way to King's Cross (which is where I am now) to join the crowd which had gathered to look at a faulty clock!

This particular malfunctioning time piece is the OMEGA London 2012 countdown clock which is (or was an hour ago) stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56 less than a day after it was unveiled to commemorate the 500th day before next year's Games, and that tickets for the event(s) are now on sale.

Is this matter of national embarassment or an innovative and unique way of publicising that we're going to host next year's Olympics by inventing a stopped clock that isn't right twice a day?